Waitlist Statistics

Being waitlisted isn’t as crushing a result as being rejected, but it can feel like you’ve been exiled to admissions purgatory. It’s important to know if your waitlisted status means you still have a serious shot at being admitted to your first-choice university or if it’s the equivalent of a Powerball ticket. For example, at Middlebury, Brandeis, Georgetown, Tulane, and UPenn somewhere between zero and 20 students are likely to be plucked from the waitlist. On the other hand, Colorado College, Cornell, Lehigh, Williams, and William & Mary all took more than 60 students off of their waitlists. The following table indicates waitlist statistics at some of America’s most selective colleges and universities for the 2018-19 academic year. Data was collected from each institution’s 2018-19 Common Data Set (CDS).